Moving Metal

Robert Zurbach, left, came into Reliance with the Drake acquisition. He was considered at one point a potential Gimbel successor, but he ultimately focused on finance and special projects.

Crider parlayed his clerking skills into a job at Drake’s Fresno location, where he avidly sought increased responsibilities. After a year as a billing clerk, Crider asked to learn product pricing. He worked another year in that department before switching to inside sales, placing orders. From there, he went to outside sales and spent five years traveling his territory and building his personal selling skills. Around 1958, Crider applied to become the Fresno Sales Manager. His boss hesitated, telling the youthful salesman, “You’re pretty young. We got a guy out there sixty years old and here you are in your late twenties wanting to jump

service centers in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Santa Clara, San Diego, and Fresno.

MANAGEMENT, OLD AND NEW Unbeknownst to Gimbel, the Drake acquisition brought another man into Reliance who became pivotal to the com- pany’s future—Joseph D. Crider. Crider was born in Wright, Missouri, in 1929. After graduating from high school in 1948, he joined the U.S. Air Force and served in Japan as a clerk. “I got a lot of education,” he later remembered, and “I became a pretty fast typist.” Following his discharge in 1950,

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